London theatre reviews

The much-feted Sam Grabiner’s second play – following last year’s Olivier-winning Boys on the Verge of Tears – is a dark, dark comedy about a jaw-droppingly dysfunctional British Jewish family…

A Windrush-themed panto is a neat concept: in a fizzy opening act, we see Durone Stokes’s big-hearted dreamer of a Dick (it’s a funny name, okay) arrive from Jamaica on the iconic passenger vessel…

For the last three years Hampstead Theatre has been staging lesser-revived Stoppards over Christmas, and for Stoppard fans it’s been fun to see them come to life. But Indian Ink is a deep cut…

The parameters for judging a stage adaption of the horror film franchise Paranormal Activity are clearly quite different to, say, a production of King Lear. It’s not the only consideration, but judgement does essentially boil down to one main question: is it scary? To which the answer here is a frazzled ‘oh my, yes’.

The one-night stand is comedy’s gift that keeps on giving: a pressure cooker of intimacy, regret, hope and awkward logistics. David Ireland’s Most Favoured takes that familiar morning-after scenario and, then twists it into something weirder…

Unless you’re fluent in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Hiberno-English, John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World requires proper, eyes-wide-open concentration. And even more so in this NT revival, in which director Caitríona McLaughlin celebrates the lyrical language of the play in all its glory. At its best, hers is a production that rewards attentiveness, weaving in beautiful, affecting images of County Mayo folklore alongside some standout acting performances.

Flex time: 14 years ago I caught Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway. It was good, although I was definitely distracted by both my jet lag and the fact it starred Robin Williams. The subject matter – the Second Iraq War – was a popular one at the time, and the play perhaps just seemed like the starry culmination of a wider phenomenon. It never made it to the UK. Or not until now.

A major London trend this year has been the glut of tech-enhanced immersive exhibitions, that have typically taken some great historical disaster – the sinking of the Titanic, the eruption of Vesuvius – and made it ‘fun’ via AR, VR, film and other such gubbins. That’s not the only way to use tech to craft an exhibition, though. As you’d probably gather from the title, The Museum of Austerity is an altogether more sober affair.

The groanworthy title sets the tone for this fun re-telling of Dracula via close harmony singing and a stream of winkingly awful puns. Co-writers Dan Patterson (Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mock the Week) and Jez Bond, also directing, feed an irreverent combination of Bram Stoker’s novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film version through a Mel Brooks musical mangle.